


kinder und sterne küssen und verlieren sich

by LittleDragonPrince



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Background Relationships, Bad Decisions, Bipolar Disorder, Drabble Collection, Gen, I'm Bad At Summaries, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Post-Canon, Schizophrenia, Sorry Not Sorry, is anyone surprised i wrote another brain fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-13 22:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10523421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDragonPrince/pseuds/LittleDragonPrince
Summary: Life isn't easy for kids like her, she knows this, knows her brain has been broken since forever ago and no amount of prayer or medication or midday naps will make things easier.  It can take the edge off - soften the shapes into a real world she can touch and live inside of safely - but she's still sick.It's okay, though.  She's not alone.  Kids like her, they gotta stick together.[a series of drabbles about mental illness, found family, and dark cabaret song lyrics]





	1. bliss-tainted

**Author's Note:**

> WHY DID I DO THIS....AGAIN...
> 
> i honestly haven't finished playing this game but i know the gist of it from lets plays and friends telling me so. if i get some details wrong that's WHY but this is MOSTLY about the characters not the plot. so.
> 
> i'll cut this off eventually i just wanna write some lil things to get in the groove. i put 5 down tentatively for Now but idk !!! what'll happen next. 's just drabbles
> 
> EDIT I FORGOT CHARACTER TAGS IM A DAMN FUCKIN FOOL
> 
> (in my headcanons, mae is schizophrenic & gregg has bipolar as well as autism. angus has ptsd & bea has depression. nobody in nitw is neurotypical or straight)

Sometimes, on sleepy spring afternoons, when the days were just starting to last a little longer and the nights were growing less frigid, Mae and Gregg would sit out in the (now abandoned) Food Donkey parking lot and watch the birds sunbath on the dilapidated roof.  The warblers would tiptoe around, careful of loose shingles, and huddle their fat bodies low down until their feet disappeared under their feathers.  Sometimes Gregg would throw pebbles up at them; they’d hit the gutters and rattle around with the dead leaves and stagnant rainwater.

It is one such day, and Mae has her combat boots all tangled up in a rotting plastic bag; it crinkles as she kicks her feet, stomps along the lines of a faded disabled parking space.  Gregg bounces some bits of broken up asphalt in his hand and narrows his eyes, focusing hard on the single window of the rundown supermarket still intact.

“You get it, don’t you?” Mae asks; she watches the piece of concrete cut through the shimmering heat of the evening, hears the glass crumple and scatter along the horizon – Gregg lets out a whoop of pride.  “You – you _feel it_ also.”

“I mean, I guess,” Gregg’s ear twitches.  Mae can’t see his face, which she guesses is intentional.  He can’t see hers either, and that’s more than fine.  “Not quite like that, but maybe a little bit – a little bit like it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep,” the _p_ pops, and the second stone goes soaring.  It hits the wall of the Food Donkey with a solid _ker-dunk_ ; a warbler startles from its dozing position and flies away.

There’s silence now, and neither wants to be the first to break it. Mae thinks back on all the things that had happened to bring them here – it had only been a few weeks ago they’d taken down Casey Hartley’s missing person posters.  Sometimes, before the shapes and the hole in the center of the universe, he’d join them here in their lazy ceremonies.  It doesn’t feel different now, without him, but it should.  It _should_ , and the ache rings through Mae’s head like the sparkling, crushing sound of glass beneath Gregg’s sneakers now.

“What are you doing?”

Gregg’s ear twitches again, but this time he shoots her a toothy smile over his shoulder – the eye contact grounds her and she tugs the plastic bag from her feet as he explains, “I’m looking for that real big chunk I threw earlier, it was a goodie!”  He turns back to shuffle his bare hands through the shards.  He’s a pro at this, at the dangerous things _like_ this, because he doesn’t even yelp when the sharp edges get caught in his skin.  “Wanna scare those birds off for good.  Stupid birds.”

“Heh, why, dude,” Mae scoffs – it’s not really a question – and makes her way over to the window where Gregg is knelt down.  “What did these birds do to you?”

“I’unno,” he barks, and she can hear the anger and the laughter and the little bit of mania in it, “Exist, is what.”

“Damn birds,” Mae agrees without even thinking about it, “How dare they.”

Gregg stands suddenly, bounces the recovered piece of asphalt in his hand, and then hurls it through the thoroughly broken window.  Mae hears but doesn’t see it clatter around the empty aisles inside.  “It’s – it’s like it’s all very _fast_ ,” he says, apropos of absolutely nothing.

“Huh?”

“For me,” he clarifies, tilting his head to stare into the darkness of the Food Donkey, “it’s not shapes, or colors, or buzzing and voices, it’s just… fast.  I’m going too fast.”

 _Oh, right,_ she remembers, confusion dissipating, _I asked him a question.  Not even, like, a minute ago._

“It’s like.  When you drink too much caffeine, or don’t sleep, or take a buncha drugs – or, or all three?” He crouches back down to rummage through the glass again.  Mae bends down to join him; the sunlight is opalescent, boils the ground so it burns Mae’s palms. “All three at once.  And I just get jittery, and I gotta do something to make the jitters stop.  I gotta do something as fast as I feel.”

The sky burns bright orange, and the sunset reflects golden on the shiny black surface of Gregg’s leather jacket.  Mae watches him – how his fingers fiddle lightning quick along the ground, how his eyes are wide and bright and mostly sclera at this point – and understands what he means.  It’s not the same, but it _is_ , in another way.  The buzzing and the jitters, the shapes and the speed.

Bea had said he was bipolar, and maybe she’d just been trying to be mean, but…

“Is it ever like that for you?”

“Um,” blood rushes to Mae’s face, bashful at being caught reminiscing.  Gregg has plopped down onto his backside, legs sprawled at awkward angles.  He has a big shard of glass clutched in his left hand, but he’s looking at her, and her face, and her eyes, and – “Sometimes.  I think mostly it’s noise.  It’s loud and it makes all my senses hurt, y’know?  Sometimes it makes me sick to my stomach, but like, _angry-sick_.  And I’m just gonna angry-vomit all over everything, or something, but it’s with my hands not my… stomach acid.”

“Makes sense,” Gregg says, and Mae _knows_ it does not, but neither do their brains, so it’s most likely alright if Gregg lies to her right now.  “Sometimes it’s like that for me, too, I think.”

“You think?”

“It’s hard to put words to these feelings!” Gregg announces, far too loud for the small distance between them.  He throws his arms out, wide like his legs, the way Mae does sometimes when she really wants to make a point, “So all I can do is _think!_ I don’t know!”

It’s a _victorious_ ‘I don’t know’ – not clueless or bitter or defeated, but joyous.  There’s something wonderful about not understanding something so fundamental about yourself. Mae grins and she feels it in her eyes and chest and hands, burning up on the parking lot.

“I don’t know!” she choruses back, and Gregg laughs louder still till it rattles in her ears.  He stands, examines the glass closely, and says - apropos of absolutely nothing, warm like sleepy springtime sundown – “Do you think this would make a good knife?  Knife substitute?”

“Hell yeah, dude,” Mae agrees, not bothering to stand, “You could stab someone with that.  Could kill ‘em.”

“ _Sweeeeet_.  Wanna try it?”

“Killing someone?”

“No!  Not now, at least.  We should knife fight with ‘em.”

“Broken glass fight,” Mae considers it very carefully, already searching the ground for a suitable weapon, “I like the way you think.”

They do end up giving it a shot – Mae loses, ends up slicing her hand on her own piece of glass, and Gregg steals some bandages from the pharmacy aisle of the Food Donkey – and stay there till the first stars start peeking out from behind the light pollution.  The ground is cool beneath their backs as they lay there and point out where they think constellations may start or stop.  Angus calls, eventually (always the worrywart) and Mae decides to walk Gregg back to the apartment complex when it’s finally time to get going.  The birds had long since disappeared, replaced by fireflies and small-footed bats circling high, high up in the plum-bruised sky.

As they wander out of the empty parking lots, wobbling over the heat-cracked pavement, they agree to do this again some time.  Sometime soon.


	2. binge insecurities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know!” Mae exclaims, with no real emotion behind it. She’s just being loud because it’s nice to be loud, sometimes, and it’s cathartic, and the quiet makes everything sharp and sticky and painful, “This shirt is too small! And it itches!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: BODY IMAGE/WEIGHT TALK/DISCUSSION OF MEDICATION AND SIDE EFFECTS  
> i've been all of these medications except for lithium and concerta!!
> 
> i think lots of fat ppl have had to deal with the "i cant possibly be sexually attractive to people, at the very least i am cute" thing. i know i have. sorry if she seems real down on herself for being fat; kno that im writing this as a fat person; i dont think any of the things mae thinks about herself, about other people. it's insecurity and its a bitch.
> 
> i wanted to explore the various experiences schizophrenic people often have with medication, and the mixed relationship one grows to have for it. i personally haven't really had any positive experiences with it, but i know lots of people have good ones. i tried to make the experience as realistic, but as optimistic, as possible.
> 
> you should never feel pressured to be on or off medication. if it works and makes you feel good, go for it. if it hurts you, you shouldnt feel obligated to try treatment that does nothing but make you miserable.
> 
> anyways, enjoy!

“Ugh.”

Bea doesn’t respond to Mae’s grunt of disgust – of course she doesn’t, this kind of petty whining is so… _below_ her – so, after adjusting the too-small shirt over her stomach yet again, Mae gives it another shot.  “ _Ugh,”_ she says, and she tries to quell the satisfaction when Bea’s eyes flicker up from her phone to observe the changing room mirror, “I’m so gross.”

“No, you aren’t, Mae,” Bea deadpans, and then she says nothing else, as if it’s truly that simple.  As if she really believes it.  The satisfaction is gone for real now.

“I _am._ Ever since the stupid Seroquel I’ve gained, like,” Mae takes a second to tug on the shirt, watch it strain against her stomach, feels her eyes burn at the roundness, “thirty pounds? I’m malformed! Bloated! Like a _corpse._ ”

“You aren’t.” Bea interrupts the stream of self-loathing coolly, taking a few steps towards Mae and the taunting, awful mirror, “A corpse.  You’re just fat.”

Mae bristles reflexively at the statement, and Bea immediately cuts in with an eye-roll that’s more habit than genuine exasperation. “Fat’s not a bad word.  It’s just a _word._   It’s what you are.  You’re also,” her gaze flickers so that they’re making eye contact through the reflection for one split second; when Bea next speaks, she’s staring at the floor, uncharacteristically shy, “hot.”

It’s Mae’s turn to roll her eyes, but she really _means_ it. “No, I’m not. And that’s fact!” she pulls the shirt from over her head, and staunchly refuses to look at herself, standing pathetically in the center of this department store changing room in just a beige XL sports bra. “I mean, sure, _cute_ , maybe, on a good day, but I’m not _hot._ ”

Bea opens her mouth, like she might say something more, but stops.  The fluorescent light overhead flickers a bit, and Mae can see, without really tilting her head, the bodies of a few dead moths and one particularly hardy fly still fluttering about.  “Agree to disagree,” her girlfriend says, finally; there’s a sad look in her eye, and on a different day, Mae might start a fight over it.  Instead, she tosses the too-small shirt into the corner of the booth and grabs the red-grey-blue flannel she _knows_ won’t button right at her chest.

The silence starts to fray her nerves a bit, so she slips one sleeve on and says, “The ziprasidome is meant to help with the weight gain, y’know.”  Once both of her arms are through the sleeves, she glances down to her toes; they peek out, rosy and curled, from beneath her soft stomach.  The shame rushes hot up her spine and into her head, “I don’t see it.”

“Mae,” Bea cuts in, and the sad look is much stronger now, though her tone’s annoyed, “Your body is _fine,_ you’re fine.  You’re doing really well.  The Wellbutrin is helping…” she’s never been one for physical affection – it’s just not her style – but she grabs Mae’s hands and threads their fingers together.  Her skin is cool and Mae feels sweaty and large, like some kind of parade balloon Bea has tethered to the ground with her grip. “…And it’s ziprasidone, babe.”

Mae ignores the correction entirely, choosing instead to flounder with the buttons of the flannel, trying to get them all done up with one hand.  Even her _fingers_ seem fat and graceless, and she feels the anxiety tear, guttural and raw, through her throat.  The noise startles Bea, but her face doesn’t show it; the fingers wrapped around Mae’s hand tighten, though, and that’s the metaphorical straw to break the metaphorical camel’s back.

“We thought the Prozac was helping, too, but then the migraines happened!” she yells; her arms fly wide, so Bea is forced to let her go, and now she’s flying away – a runaway Harfest Day float, and she’s sure to crash into the buildings and break half the town down.  “It’s gonna stop working _eventually!_ Or the side effects are gonna make it all worthless anyway!”  She glares down at her reflection again, at the way the fabric stretches tight around the flab of her upper-arms.  She must be feeling particularly bitter, because she continues, “Meanwhile, Gregg gets to take _Concerta_ , and _Lithium_ , and _lose weight_ , and _feel,_ ” her arms swing back down to perch at either side of her face; she makes overexaggerated quotation marks with her fingers, eyes rolling wildly in her skull, “ _’Better.’_ What the fuck.”

“It’s not easy for Gregg,” Bea snaps; she’s not mad, Mae can tell, but she kind of wishes she was.  An angry Bea is easier to deal with than…whatever is happening right now, “You know that.  You know he has to be real careful with his sleep schedule or else he ends up queasy and tired for the next, like, two days. You -.”

“I know!” Mae exclaims, with no real emotion behind it.  She’s just being loud because it’s nice to be loud, sometimes, and it’s cathartic, and the quiet makes everything sharp and sticky and painful, “This shirt is too small!  And it itches!”

“Alright, well,” Bea grabs the collar and eases it down off Mae’s hunched shoulders, bring it down so it hangs uselessly until Mae shimmies her way out of the sleeves.  It gets stuck on her hips, but with a tug from her girlfriend, it slides down her thighs and into a puddle of plaid fabric on the floor.  “Is that better?”

“Yes!” Mae says, far too loud; Bea narrows her eyes at her through the mirror’s glass.  She tries again.  “Yes.”  The expression on Bea’s face softens; she’s smiling, but just with her eyes, the way she does in the rose-tinted walls of their bedroom early in the morning, when the world’s half-asleep and the quiet doesn’t hurt anymore.  “Thank you.”

Bea doesn’t speak, just steps forward to rest her chin on Mae’s shoulder.  She presses a feather-light kiss to Mae’s neck, and the heat that boils Mae’s veins now is definitely, _definitely_ a good kind.  Bea’s arms snake around her waist, and the pressure is pleasant, different from the choking of the flannel that still sits, forgotten, on the floor.

“I read somewhere,” says Bea, voice deep and soothing, “that some ADHD medication has been used to treat schizophrenia.  You could ask Gregg about his experiences.  If you’re so unhappy with your current meds… You have a choice in all of this, you know.”

Mae has found forgetting this simple fact – that she didn’t _have_ to do _every little thing_ the psychologists asked – is easier than people assumed.  With this little reminder, suddenly she is grounded again, no longer tumbling through the city streets.  She heaves a sigh, nasal and noisy through her nose, and makes eye contact with herself in the mirror.  It takes effort, and her brain immediately begins to yell about how her cheeks are too round, and her double chin is too noticeable, and her eyes have such big bags under them, _honestly how can she stand to leave the house,_ but she doesn’t flinch away.  Bea is smiling with her whole face now.

“Maybe Vyvanse,” Mae says, and her voice comes out mysteriously flat, like she doesn’t even care anymore.  She wishes with her whole heart that she didn’t, “I heard that can help with weight.”

“Nah,” Bea murmurs fondly; she gives Mae’s stomach a squeeze, nestles her face a little closer to Mae’s neck, “You’re perfect like this.”

Mae feels like she is on fire, but a _wonderful_ kind of fire, and the moment lasts for a few more seconds before she manages to wiggle out of her girlfriend’s arms to grab her original shirt and pull it back on.  In her familiar baseball tee, the mirror feels less mocking, less grotesque, and the girl staring back at her almost looks…

Well, hot’s not the word Mae would use, but she’s more than cute.

“The movie theater down the block is playing _The Bye-Bye Man_ , we should so check it out.”

“No way, Mae,” the changing room door swings open with a creek, and Mae’s girlfriend is glaring down at her with a familiar, tender kind of exhaustion, “That movie looks abysmal.”

“Exactly!”

“ _No._ ”

“C’mon, I came here to this mall and didn’t steal a single thing, just like I promised! You owe me.”

“…Fine. I don’t know why I put up with you.”

“Because you love me.”

“ _Ugh_.”


End file.
